Ariel Castro padlocked the doors leading to his basement, his attic and his garage and never allowed his family inside, his son has exclusively revealed to MailOnline.
Chilling photographs from 2001 show a grinning Castro standing in front of a locked door - behind which an unimaginable horrors may have been unfolding in the basement.
At that point, Michele Knight, one of the three women he allegedly held captive for a decade, had already been missing for a year.
In an interview with MailOnline, his son Anthony Castro, 31, has spoken of his horror at his father's alleged crimes and revealed how Ariel Castro asked him just weeks ago whether he believed the kidnapping of Amanda Berry - one of his victims - would ever be solved.
'If it's true that he took her captive and forced her into having sex with him and having his child and keeping her hidden and keeping them from sunlight, he really took those girls lives,' he said.
'He doesn't deserve to have his own life anymore. He deserves to be behind bars for the rest of her life. I'm just thankful they're alive.'
Among his infrequent contact with his father, whom separated from his mother in the 1990s, one recent conversation particularly stands out in Anthony's mind.
In mid-April, he says, his father asked him whether he thought police would ever find Amanda Berry, who escaped the Cleveland home on Monday afternoon.
When Mr Castro said he thought Berry was likely dead because she had been missing so long, Ariel responded: 'Really? You think so?'
At that time, according to police, Berry was locked in the basement of his father's home.
'The house was always locked,' Anthony remembered . 'There were places we could never go. There were locks on the basement. Locks on the attic. Locks on the garage.'
Ariel Castro, 52, was arrested with his two brothers, 54-year-old Pedro and 50-year-old Onil after Berry, now 26, dramatically escaped from the house on Monday, a decade after she vanished.
Berry was rescued from the home, along with 23-year-old Gina DeJesus, who disappeared in April 2004 at age 14, and 32-year-old Michele Knight, who vanished in 2000 when she was 20.
Anthony, a banker who lives in Columbus, Ohio, depicted his father as a violent, controlling man who nearly beat his mother to death in 1993 while she was recovering from brain surgery.
He said his father was secretive and barred his family from entering certain rooms when he wasn?t around.
'Abused': Anthony said his father beat his mother, Nilda Figueroa, who passed away last year
Anthony said he last visited his father?s home two weeks ago, though he was not invited inside. He said he never suspected that his father could be keeping three women captive in the basement.
'The only thing I can express is a tremendous level of shock,' he said. 'To those girls, it's beyond comprehension what happened to them. It's just a nightmare. I just feel so horrible for them. Unspeakably horrible.'
Ariel's ex-wife Grimilda 'Nilda' Figueroa - Anthony's mother ? moved Mr Castro and his three sisters out of Ariel?s house in 1996 after years of violent abuse.
Anthony said he now speaks with his father just a few times a year ? and seldom visits his house.
'I haven't been at that house for longer than 20 minutes for longer than I can remember,' he said. 'And we?re talking since high school. Late 90s.'
Anthony said neither he nor his three sisters have had much of a relationship with Ariel Castro.
'Having that relationship with my dad all these years when we lived in a house where there was domestic violence and I was beaten as well... we never were really close because of that and it was also something we never really talked about,' he said.
'It?s astonishing to even think about that I was so close to that. That I was physically at the house two weeks ago while that was going on, it's a lot to grasp.'
Anthony said he has spoken with several members of his family since his father and uncles were arrested. After getting over the initial shock of the horrendous allegations, they all have accepted that Ariel was likely capable of holding the three women against their will
'They're all furious. They're livid,' he said.
His sister Angie, who lives in Cleveland with her husband and three small children, said she is convinced her father is guilty of kidnapping the women.
Anthony said he has no idea what role his uncles could have played in the ordeal. However, he says he doesn't yet believe that the three women were kept at Ariel's house for the entire 10 years.
He speculated that his uncle Onil, who also owns his house and lives alone, might have been involved in keeping the women in captivity.
'Part of me can believe he had something to do with it,' he said of his uncle. 'Part of me can?t believe that it's something of this magnitude.
Both men were alcoholics for many years, Anthony said, but Onil has since sobered up.
'When I was a kid, he was always drunk. Both of them, my uncles were always drunk,' he said.
His uncle Pedro, who lived with the mother of the brothers, has been so badly impacted by alcoholism that it's hard to even carry on a conversation with him, he said.
Amanda Berry disappeared in 2003 just a day before he 17th birthday. Her disappearance shocked her neighborhood in the west side of Cleveland
After the disappearance of Gina DeJesus in April 2004, Anthony Castro penned a piece for his local paper which included quotes from her mother.
He was a journalism student at Bowling Green State University when he wrote the article, entitled 'Gina DeJesus? disappearance has changed her neighborhood', for the Plain Press in June of that year.
Gina's mother Nancy Ruiz told him: 'You can tell the difference. People are watching out for each other?s kids. It?s a shame that a tragedy had to happen for me to really know my neighbors.
'Bless their hearts, they?ve been great. People are really looking out for my daughter.'
Originally Posted by debk589
this shit pisses me off so bad. The same thing happened to Jacee Duggard too- the damn parole officers searched the house and NEVER went in the backyard even though his ankle bracelet showed him back there constantly. Ball. Dropped.
Reply With Quote
